The language we market with
David McCarthy
In 1990, Tim O’Brien published the short story collection “The Things They Carried.” The collection explores, in unforgettable detail, the experience of a U.S. troop fighting in the Vietnam War.
The work is considered one of the best books of the 20th century. It’s sold over two million copies. And it’s a staple in literary curriculum from high schools to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (which is like Juliard for dance or Bad Boy Records for late ‘90s and early ‘00s hip-hop).
Yet the stories break rules. They are riddled with complex or unplain phrases, initialisms, and acronyms so alien and impenetrable that they likely possess no meaning to most of the reading population. The language was exclusive. And that was the point.
On Google, related searches in the “People Also Ask” feature highlight how insular the language in the “The Things They Carried” is.
In the mid-2010s, as content marketing and inbound marketing strategies gained wider adoption among B2B marketing brands, a movement took hold.
Countering the stodgy, technical product marketing from a past era in B2B, marketing leaders called for a new approach to copy and content. They wanted it simplified, shorter, and even democratic for the masses.
“Everybody who visits our website or reads our articles should understand what we do,” many marketing leaders would say. “It doesn’t matter how junior or how senior they are or where they sit in the org.”
As one well-known (infamous?) digital marketer wrote in 2015, “To be a good writer means mastery of…different things, like grammar, punctuation, and spelling…I would say that those skills, crucial as they are, aren’t as important as…creating easy-to-read content and making complex topics simple.”
Reputable content-marketers echoed the sentiment. One of the most popular marketing books of the 2010s, “Everybody Writes,” warned against jargon and buzz phrases, as well.
Many teams pivoted. They hacked paragraphs. They banned polysyllabic words. They put density on a diet.
But within B2B healthcare and health tech marketing, that may have been a mistake. And arguably, that approach may have abandoned the people who matter most and ushered in healthcare’s and health tech’s own “yoga babble” era.
In interviews, O’Brien defended his language, as many other writers (e.g., Junot Diaz) who used similar tactics have had to do. Despite clamors for clarity, O’Brien argued that the voice on the page reflects the reality of the characters’ lives.
A similar approach is worth considering in B2B healthcare and health tech marketing, too. Forward-leaning marketing leaders know that their products are not for everyone, and as a result, neither is their marketing. Both products and marketing are for some of the most educated people in the world in arguably the most complex industry in the world — U.S. healthcare. So why write for the masses?
Plenty of consumer marketing leans on hyperspecificity to reflect a premium or exclusive product. (I own North Face boots. I do not portage in the vastness of the Canadian wilderness.) Similarly, medical directors don’t want to learn generically about an advanced primary care service the way that the general public would. They want to understand in their own language its clinical integrity, its dexterity in identifying and handling prevalent conditions, its model’s ability to improve upstream and downstream outcomes and reduce high-intensity care, and so on.
That’s the reality of their (professional) lives.
In the end, B2B marketing teams within healthcare and health tech overindexed on the “simplify” movement, in my opinion, or at the very least, misplaced the emphasis on simplification. (I’d argue that it’s the mechanics to simplify, not the topic. Value-based reimbursement models. Fraud, waste, and abuse. Chronic care management. What we do, and what our buyers do, is never simple.)
The consequence may have been significant. Some colleagues and connections have told me that the oversimplified messaging that’s become common in healthcare and health tech has left buying teams unsure of the brand’s category and the products’ value proposition. If that has not impacted revenue, it’s likely impacted top- and middle-funnel engagement and lead generation.
Luckily, many brands’ GTM strategy is becoming more mature, focusing their efforts on their ideal customer profile and personas instead of anyone who can access the website domain. Meanwhile role- and account-based targeting has become more precise, enabling faster feedback on the richer, more-realistic messaging and content that teams test. Perhaps a new movement may emerge on the language we market with.